Ben’s Big Gig is the next big thing.

The album was a great end to 2008, and the project for 2009 is Ben’s Big Gig, which is going to happen in March/April in Oxford. It’s quite an ambitious project, which will use all the best social media technology to enhance an already splendid musical performance, so I’ve brought Xander on board as co-producer.

I’m trying to crowdsource and publish as much of the preparation, promotion, PR and planning as possible. You’ll hear a lot more about this over the next few weeks. For now, you might like to have a poke around Ben’s Big Gig Blog, where we’ll be posting links to everything (for instant updates and news, the Ben’s Big Gig Twitter feed is worth following).

The first task on our enormous todo list is to book the venue, and this pitch we sent yesterday should explain the concept pretty well:

I wrote a lot of songs in 2008, and involved myself deeply in the exciting world of Social Media technologies (the descendants of Facebook and Myspace). I now have hundreds of ‘followers’ and ‘fans’ and ‘friends’ all over the internet and I’m exploring new ways for musicians to interact with such a disparate community. There is already a growing House Concert movement which shifts the responsibility for organisation gigs to the fans and lets bands and musicians tour without all the usual expenses. That’s a lot of fun, and I’ve been playing quite a few house concerts over the past couple of years. But I’m thinking of something a little grander, which I’m calling Cabaret 2.0 (for want of a better term ;o). I’m going to put on a concert in March/April that uses all the latest internet technologies to add an extra level of magic to a classic cabaret-style performance. I’ll play 15 or so of my songs with my band, some of which will have video, crowd interaction, improvisation and guest musicians. The evening will be compèred by somebody great (probably a poet friend of mine), and there will be other non-musical acts (poetry, comedy and maybe some acrobatics). The whole thing will be streamed live on the internet using two or three cameras and recorded for release as an online album. We will also have screens in the venue which will allow people from elsewhere on the internet to write messages, post videos, and otherwise take part. The audience will also have the chance to record short video clips for instant upload and write messages live onto the website. It sounds complicated but is quite easy to achieve using current web technologies (Twitter, UStream, 12seconds, etc.). People have done this sort of thing with technology conferences and events, but this would be the first musical event to be so connected and integrated with the internet. I’m sure you can imagine why I’m excited…

Ben’s Big Gig is all about communication, connection, feedback and social media. Leave a comment and tell us what you think. We’ll be opening up more communication channels over the coming weeks.

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